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今日诗歌
THE
CAT
AND
THE
MOON
by: W. B. Yeats (1865-1939)
THE cat went here and there
And the moon spun round like a top,
And the nearest kin of the moon,
The creeping cat, looked up.
Black Minnaloushe stared at the moon,
For, wander and wail as he would,
The pure cold light in the sky
Troubled his animal blood.
Minnaloushe runs in the grass
Lifting his delicate feet.
Do you dance, Minnaloushe, do you dance?
When two close kindred meet,
What better than call a dance?
Maybe the moon may learn,
Tired of that courtly fashion,
A new dance turn.
Minnaloushe creeps through the grass
From moonlit place to place,
The sacred moon overhead
Has taken a new phase.
Does Minnaloushe know that his pupils
Will pass from change to change,
And that from round to crescent,
From crescent to round they range?
Minnaloushe creeps through the grass
Alone, important and wise,
And lifts to the changing moon
His changing eyes.
All
the
world's
a
stage
William
Shakespeare
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
Go
Seek
Her
Out
Go seek her out all courteously,
And say I come,
Wind of spices whose song is ever
Epithalamium.
O, hurry over the dark lands
And run upon the sea
For seas and lands shall not divide us
My love and me.
Now, wind, of your good courtesy
I pray you go,
And come into her little garden
And sing at her window;
Singing: The bridal wind is blowing
For Love is at his noon;
And soon will your true love be with you,
Soon,
O
soon.
James Joyce
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Literature Network » Percy Bysshe Shelley » Ozymandias
A
prospect
of
the
sea
It was high summer, and the boy was lying in the corn. He was happy because he had no
work to do and the weather was hot. He heard the corn sway from side to side above him,
and the noise of the birds who whistled from the branches of the trees that hid the house.
Lying flat on his back, he stared up into the unbrokenly blue sky falling over the edge of
the corn. The wind, after the warm rain before noon, smelt of rabbits and cattle. He
stretched himself like a cat, and put his arms behind his head. Now he was riding on the
sea, swimming through the golden corn waves, gliding along the heavens like a bird; in
sevenleague boots he was springing over the fields; he was building a nest in the sixth of
the seven trees that waved their hands from a bright, green hill. Now he was a boy with
tousled hair, rising lazily to his feet, wandering out of the corn to the strip of river by the
hillside. He put his fingers in the water, making a mock sea-wave to roll the stones over
and shake the weeds; his fingers stood up like ten tower pillars in the magnifying water,
and a fish with a wise head and a lashing tail swam in and out of the tower gates. He
made up a story as the fish swam through the gates into the pebbles and the moving bed.
There was a drowned princess from a Christmas book, with her shoulders broken and her
two red pigtails stretched like the strings of a fiddle over her broken throat; she was
caught in a fisherman's net, and the fish plucked her hair. He forgot how the story ended,
if ever there were an end to a story that had no beginning. Did the princess live again,
rising like a mermaid from the net, or did a prince from another story tauten the tails of
her hair and bend her shoulder-bone into a harp and pluck the dead, black tunes for ever
in the courts of the royal country? The boy sent a stone skidding over the green water. He
saw a rabbit scuttle, and threw a stone at its tail. A fish leaped at the gnats, and a lark
darted out of the green earth. This was the best summer since the first seasons of the
world. He did not believe in God, but God had made this summer full of blue winds and
heat and pigeons in the house wood. There were no chimneys on the hills with no name in
the distance, only the trees which stood like women and men enjoying the sun; there were
no cranes or coal-tips, only the nameless distance and the hill with seven trees. He could
think of no words to say how wonderful the summer was, or the noise of the wood-pigeons,
or the lazy corn blowing in the half wind from the sea at the river's end. There were no
words for the sky and the sun and the summer country: the birds were nice, and the corn
was nice.